Report presented to the Metropolitan Counties Branch of the British Medical Association / by the Committee appointed to consider the subject of the education of the general practitioner of medicine [...] signed cy C.Macnamara for the Committee.

  • Macnamara, C.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report presented to the Metropolitan Counties Branch of the British Medical Association / by the Committee appointed to consider the subject of the education of the general practitioner of medicine [...] signed cy C.Macnamara for the Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Dr. Andrew Wood’s Committee, on Medical Education, reported to the General Medical Council, in the year 1869, that however desirable it might be to make chemistry a subject for the preliminary examination, it was out of the question doing so, because this science was beyond the range of ordinary schools. Within the past ten years, however, a considerable advance has been made in our system of national education, and it seems that at the present time there is no necessity for a man to come to a medical school to study elementary botany, physics, inorganic chemistry or biology; for the knowledge of these subjects is now acquired by a con- siderable number of youths, educated either in the Govern- ment Schools of Science and Art, or elsewhere. These subjects should therefore be entirely removed from the medical curriculum, and made a part of the preliminary examination to be passed by every student, before he is allowed to enter his name on the books of the General Medical Council. The preliminary examination should include a know- ledge of the subjects detailed in the existing Orders of the General Medical Council, and, in addition, elementary botany, physics, biology and inorganic chemistry. The question naturally arises as to the feasibility of this scheme, and in order that we might obtain correct information on the subject, the matter was referred to Professor Huxley, who observes, “ the examinations of the Science and Art Department very nearly fulfil the required conditions 5 that is to say, a student w ho has passed in the first class of the advanced stage of those examinations in physics, chemistry, and elementary botany and biology, would possess a very fair knowledge of these preliminary sciences. It would be desirable, however, to introduce more of the practical element into the examina- tions for intending medical students than I have been permitted to give in the science and art examination,